This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is our American Stories, and we continue with our special Christmas season storytelling.

And we do this every Christmas

season, well, because it's fun to do, and we know we love it, and we hope you do too.

Philadelphia has a reputation across professional sports for having the toughest and roughest fans.

Nobody knows that better than Frank Olivo. In 1968, the 19-year-old

Olivo was dressed as Santa Claus at an Eagles football game where he was booed and pelted

with snowballs. It's such a famous moment that ESPN even made a spoof 30 for 30 about it.

Here to tell the story is Frank's first cousin and best friend, Richard Monastra.

Here's Rich, starting with a little background on both him and Snowball Santa Frank Oliva.

We were born in the post-war era.

Two of us are baby boomers. I was born in 46. Frank was born in 1948,

in South Philadelphia, born to typical Italian immigrant families. Our parents hailed from Naples, Italy for the most part.

We were born and raised in South Philadelphia,

went to Catholic elementary schools, Catholic high school. I graduated in 1964. Frank graduated

in 1966 from the same high school, Bishop Newman. I had, I went on to college. Frank decided

that he wanted to be a barber.

So he went to barboring school.

His father was a veteran of World War II.

He had landed at Omaha Beach in the D-Day.

He was wounded and wound up with a plate in his head.

His mother, Rose, worked her whole life in the tailor shops, which was pretty typical

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